


'til it was a battle cry

by theviolonist



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ravenna's life isn't a fairytale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til it was a battle cry

Once upon a time someone attacked Ravenna's village and her mother cursed her. Her life isn't a fairytale. 

But she made it, Ravenna. She's a queen now. She has an army and magic sparks at her fingertips, the black wisps of it curling around her knuckles and sinking into the pale skin. She takes baths of milk; her beauty is unrivaled. 

Ravenna didn't dream of being a queen when she was a child. She dreamed of being like her mother, kind and slow, welcoming, loving, tender. But fate is what it is, and she intends to make the best of what she has. It's how her mother raised her. 

It's not that bad, really. 

+

It wouldn't be a fairytale if there wasn't a hitch in the plan. Ravenna doesn't know this is a fairytale, and even if she did, she would never imagine herself to be the villain. But here she is: Ravenna, Queen of the Darkness. How bland, she'd say if she knew. How unoriginal. 

Ravenna takes a hundred kingdoms before she casts her eyes on the one that hosts her downfall. She's beautiful – blond and dust-covered, whimpering naked in a destroyed carriage. A king saves her (enslaves her) and makes her his wife (imprisons her). Ravenna smiles. Another crown, she thinks as gold and jewels come adorning her head, but this one feels heavier. This one feels like death. 

But Ravenna isn't one to believe in prophecies (if she was, she would already be dead). She spies a furtive child in the corridors as she walks to her husband's room on her wedding night (her execution day – or maybe his). A wave of aching longing floods into her chest. If she could – maybe – be a mother, if she could keep the child, make it hers, raise her, maybe, if she could -

But the child bares her teeth and runs away, her black hair flowing in pretty curls in her back. 

Ravenna resumes walking with a heavy heart. It's just her luck – of course the child would be loyal, this kind of loyalty only kings and fools have, that only their castles and high walls permit they keep. Ravenna is a real woman; she knows loyalty does nothing but lose wars. 

That night, Ravenna doesn't open her legs to let another king in. She stabs him in the heart with a bejewelled dagger she found in his nightstand, and watches the blood soak his shirt and bubble at his lips. His eyes are dark with fear; he doesn't cry out. Red trickles from his beard on his neck. "He was a good man," will say someone tomorrow, as the peasants bend and kneel. 

But Ravenna is a better woman – it's all that counts. That's how the world works, really: take, or be taken. Being good didn't help the king, after all, and it certainly won't help Snow White. 

+

Unexpectedly, it does. If Ravenna knew that she was in a fairytale, she would understand that Good needs to win, otherwise the story doesn't work. As it is, she tries to get Snow White killed, over and over again. She sends a Huntsman for her and he falls in love; she sends her brother and Snow White ridicules him. Ravenna grows old, because that's her curse. 

(And she needs Snow White's heart, too, more and more everyday – the aching grows to be untolerable, and Ravenna wakes at night from dreams of eating it, cutting it out of her princess's chest herself, severing the arteries one by one and raising it to her mouth, bloody and thumping...)

Ravenna asks her mirror. She can't forgive him for being the one that made it all begin, the first one that said, "There is one who has come of age, my Queen, who is fairer than you." The mirror tells her Snow White is preparing to go to war. She's in the forest, he says, rallying her forces. 

Let her come, Ravenna thinks. 

+

Sometimes Ravenna looks at herself and wonders how she let herself become this cruel. She knows – cruelty is necessary, and she needs that to keep the people scared and faithful – but sometimes she wonders if her mother would be proud. If she would understand. If she knew, at the time, that her enchantment was a curse. ("This world is ruled by men," she'd said as she ran her fingers on young Ravenna's forehead, tracing ancient sigils, "but men are fools. Beauty will give you power over them.")

Ravenna doesn't change. She adds spikes to her dresses because she's a warrior before anything else, and she isn't weak. She's a queen. Ravenna is still proud of this, of all that she has, the gold and the blood. It's her revenge. Snow White is too young to understand it, let alone take it from Ravenna. Ravenna isn't afraid. 

She remembers seeing Snow, fleetingly, the day of her escape. _We meet again_ , she thought as she watched the lean, long-limbed figure run across the yard. She didn't resent her her beauty, at the time. It didn't occur to her that she might this "fairer" princess, this ennemy. Our beauty is different, uncomparable, she thought then – Snow has hair as dark as night and mine is the color of pale dawn; her heart burns with the same old fire as her father's, and mine only craves respite. 

It's been a long time since Ravenna has wanted someone. She's been taken against her will too many times, and it has numbed her, her body and mind. ("Men are destroyers," used to say her mother, whose cheeks were scarred but who had refused to scar her child's.)

In this moment, though, she wanted Snow. Snow, the daughter of a man she murdered, the girl she's sending men out to kill, the warrior she's going to fight soon. Snow. Snow White. 

It's not often that Ravenna is ashamed or afraid, but this day she stayed at her window until the fire in her belly cooled down to ashes, and then she drank wine, goblet after goblet, until she forgot her oh-so-fateful name. 

+

Ravenna isn't a stranger to schemes. She knows magic and its tricks – how to take someone's appearance, their body, their life; how to change minds; how to move water and fire and snow. She can take life; she can't give it back. She knows poisons and elixirs. She knows iron, fire, copper, silver. She makes her weapons herself, at night when she can't sleep; slips into the blacksmith's workshop and molds the steel with her own flames.

It isn't hard to make the poison that'll kill Snow White. Child's play, really. An apple, then – because someone said that Snow used to frolick in the castle's garden with William, the son of one of the King's earls, the one who is with her in the forest. Her brother has failed her, so Ravenna decides to go. 

Snow is absurdly easy to lure out of her camp. It's then that Ravenna takes a good look at her, through her lover's eyes: she's tall and defiant, with a taut back and thin, red lips. Hair black as ebony, as promised, and this famous unmarred skin.

Ravenna could just give her the apple – invoke old time's sake, it would be so easy – but instead, for a reason she can't really fathom, she plays at this man. She charms Snow, delights in watching her open up, bit by bit, her shoulders dropping a little and her smile growing kinder, more intimate. 

"William," she says. Ravenna doesn't care. Names have never been important to her; after all, her mother wanted her to be black-haired (and isn't that ironic), and called her after a messenger of death. 

"Yes," Ravenna says, and she isn't lying. 

Snow White comes closer. She glows a sort of golden glow that hurts Ravenna, too strong and too pure. It's  _trust_ , she realizes – the trust she has in William, overwhelming, and then she comes closer still, and they're chest to chest... 

Kissing Snow White, thinks Ravenna and she holds her hands back (but they aren't hers) not to touch too much; how queer. She wants to crowd Snow against one of the tree trunks and kiss the life out of her. 

Instead, she breaks the embrace and presents Snow with the gleaming apple, lips still burning with the taste of her. 

+

This is a fairytale; there are prophecies at every corner. One tells Ravenna that Snow will be her salvation and another that she will be her undoing. Ravenna doesn't listen. She waits for the fight, sharpens her swords at night, remembering cold, apple-scented kisses. 

+

The morning the army comes at the city's doors, Ravenna is alone. Her brother is dead; she sacrificed him because she had to. (Ravenna is always the one who makes the tough choices. That's why she's the one with power – she earned it.) Her people doesn't belong to her as much as it does Snow, and magic is slipping out of her grasp. 

If she were still sixteen, Ravenna would slide to her knees and cry. But she isn't sixteen, far from it – she's lived enough to think she knows things about immortality she's the only one to know, and she's old, old like stones. She puts on her armour, sends her soldiers. 

"Here we are," she says to the silent, faceless mirror. "This fateful day."

(Ravenna doesn't know this is a fairytale, but she knows this day is fateful – because she isn't blind, and because whatever happens, it will be Snow or her. Whatever happens, tomorrow will be a day to mourn.)

The mirror doesn't answer. 

Ravenna waits. 

The clock on the wall ticks; the end draws near. 

+

At last Snow comes in, sweating and glorious, dressed all in mail. She looks more like a soldier than Ravenna ever has, and jealousy sparks in her chest at the same time as desire rekindles in her stomach. Snow throws her shield in a corner. She looks incensed. She doesn't look divine or godly; she looks like a teenager with stormy eyes and a revenge to take on everyone. She's so young. 

"Snow," Ravenna says.

Snow jumps. 

Ravenna was expecting it, of course. It isn't much of a fight: Snow is frail and ill-trained with fate leading her steps; Ravenna is strong and the villain of the story. 

Snow falls on her back, her armour clanging. Her hair flows free on her shoulders and spreads on the stairs. She's very beautiful. Ravenna has a knife in one hand, and she's smiling. 

"You thought you could take my kingdom, did you, Snow White?" she asks for show, but what she's saying is,  _this isn't yours yet, child. Your age is the age of lovers and insouciance._

Snow White is stubborn. She doesn't listen. 

"You killed my father," she says. 

"Your father wasn't a good man," Ravenna answers, before she can check herself. She has anger, too, leftovers from her youth, the first time a man tore her clothes off and pretended she was nothing but a toy. 

"You're not a good woman," Snow sneers. 

"No," says Ravenna. "It isn't that easy, you know."

"It is," Snow says, with all the certainty that eighteen-year-olds always have, when they feel like they're at the top of the world, like they can lead thousands of men to war. 

Ravenna sighs. 

"You're beautiful," she says, turning towards the window. They're still fighting: the clang of steel against steel is defeaning. 

Ravenna feels Snow White close her eyes behind her. She braces herself. 

Snow jumps again, teeth bare, naked blade, honest heart. 

+

Ravenna's body is numb. Her bones are hundreds of years old, and her mind has lived millenaries. She doesn't feel pain – she feels regrets by waves, sometimes, but that's all. 

And so they fight, the child and her – they jump and run and strike with all their strength, with clenched teeth, Snow's eyes burning dark and wicked. Ravenna wonders who called her good. 

"I'm going to be the end of you," Snow whispers tightly against Ravenna's neck, Ravenna's blade hovering near her ribs, and the truth hits Ravenna with the force of a thousand armies.

She staggers back. 

"Yes," she whispers. 

This is a fairytale. Ravenna was just at the wrong place at the wrong moment. She's casualties – nothing more. 

"I'm sorry," Snow says suddenly, dropping to her knees near Ravenna, her blade still pressed against Ravenna's chest. "I'm sorry. I can't save you."

She sounds so wise, all of sudden; Ravenna can tell it's not her wisdom, but someone else's that she's accepted in her. Someone's got to teach this child how to protect herself, since Ravenna won't be here to. Someone needs to teach her to say no. 

"Be furious," Ravenna says, breath tight in her throat. "Be glorious."

Whoever it is that was there gives Snow her body back, and she blinks, looking disorientated. Ravenna isn't one to miss an opportunity. 

There she is, your rightful Queen, she thinks, almost sadly: on the ground, with a hand around her neck, lying on her back like a slave. See how easy it is to disarm her. 

"Let me go," Snow wheezes. 

"It's not my time," Ravenna says. 

She presses harder not to hear the "It is" that Snow's lips form. 

"I'm your Queen," Ravenna says. "Call me your Queen."

"You're not a queen," Snow spits. "You're a traitor and a liar."

Their teeth make a sick sound when Ravenna's mouth crushes down on Snow's. "Call me your Queen," she orders, and she must sound demented, hysteric, but this is _her_ kingdom; she's worked so hard and suffered so much, never got a minute out of the grasp of fear, never got to recline on her bed and sleep. This is her victory. She earned it. 

This child – this child is as new in the world as a rose's bud, and if she fails, it'll be nothing but a first failure. She'll come back to her castle defeated, lick her wounds, and get over it. Ravenna won't get over death. 

And this – this is so unfair, this is so, so unfair, and Ravenna's -

"You're not a Queen," Snow says calmly, her eyes fierce and black. 

+

This isn't the end, of course. 

There is another battle. Snow squirms out of Ravenna's grasp and breaks free; her two lovers find their way to the tower and fight Ravenna's monsters. Let them cut their hands on these blades of ice, Ravenna thinks (but she's crazy now, death is so near and unavoidable), so that they know what it was like to be young for this Queen that they call wrongful. Let them cut their hands and suffer. 

But (this is a fairytale) Snow breaks through Ravenna's defences, and it takes almost nothing, a clean blade to her heart, for it to all go tumbling down. 

_Here it is_ , the mirror seems to answer her at last. _The undoing_ . 

Ravenna wants to ask for the promised salvation. Did they lie to her, then? They must have. Salvation is a children's tale, as is defeat; there are only life and death. 

Ravenna feels herself grow old and parched. Her bones grind themselves to dust, and she wants to stop it but can't; her monsters fall to the ground in a rain of crystal and ashes. 

"No," she croaks. Dignity. Who spoke of dignity? Surely it was one who never suffered. 

Snow kneels again. She kneels too much for a queen, Ravenna wants to tell her, but when she opens her mouth, only blood leaks out. 

"I'm sorry," says Snow, though she doesn't look very sorry. But then: "I'm sorry, my Queen," and she bends to kiss Ravenna on the lips. Ravenna wonders how old she looks.

"Be careful," are the last words Ravenna utters. 

(Be careful – this world is full of evil. Be careful of priests and men and soldiers. Be careful of power. Be careful of greed. Be careful of love, for it wil be the thing that will lose you, that or the next young and pretty heiress who will rise against you.)

Ravenna closes her eyes. This rest, she thinks: this longed-for rest, at last. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Regina Skeptor's The Call.


End file.
